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Reviewed by CMRKeyboadist6 / 10 / 10

Silly Little Film

Scared Stiff is definitely a film that most B horror fans should venture into seeing. It literally has EVERYTHING. Horrible editing, awful acting, a script that goes nowhere, off the wall gore (at the end), and an incredible silly ending!
Kate, David and Kate's son move into and old house. Kate is an actress and David is a therapist. When they move into this house things start going very strange as Kate starts seeing things, along with her son. It turns out that the house they moved into belonged to an evil man that tortured slaves back in the late 1800's. As the family stays in the house lounger, the more possessed David becomes.
I have a soft spot for movies like this. Yes, it was a terrible film. No doubt about that. But, did I enjoy this film... I would have to say yes. For fans of a genre long dead this is definitely worth seeing as the story is actually not half bad. It is everything else that brings this movie down. Example: there is a scene in which a man is hanging outside of a window. We get a close up of his face for roughly 15 seconds. At the end of the scene, we see the mans eyes move. Truly poor editing. If you watch this movie you will see many inconsistencies. For me, that is what gives it its charm.
Goofy movie that is well worth watching for all of you 80's horror fans. 6/10

Reviewed by BA_Harrison6 / 10 / 10

You won't be.

'80s supernatural horror Scared Stiff is, for the most part, a rather dull affair, but it is lifted somewhat by a final twenty minutes that completely throw logic and sanity out of the window. The lunacy is hinted at in an earlier scene where a young lad's toy cars come to life, engines roaring and wheels spinning, but it's not until the closing act that director Richard Friedman goes all out with the madness, chucking in time travel, a snarling monster, an exploding police car (it's amazing how easy the vehicle blows up), a mouldy corpse smashing through a window (having hung outside for several days unnoticed), a giant floating lampshade in the shape of an Indian, and Ivory Coast natives hurling spears through time and space.
The plot goes something like this: having recovered from a mental breakdown, pop star Kate moves into a new home with her boyfriend (and doctor) David Young (Andrew Stevens), and her seven year old son Jason (Josh Segal), unaware that the place is haunted by the malevolent ghost of a slave merchant. This hokey old set-up is rife with clichés, Friedman's attempts at atmosphere and foreboding fall horribly flat, his cast give uniformly bad performances, and certain scenes are horribly dated (such as the moment when Jason's computer projects a holographic 3D image or when David explains what diskettes are for). If you can, try and stay the distance for the mind-numbingly bonkers ending, which is just about worth the wait, but I wouldn't blame you if you gave up and found something better to do with your time.
2/10, plus a couple more points for the nutty stuff.

Reviewed by loomis78-815-9890346 / 10 / 10

The movie delivers a few good scares

A prologue takes us to 1857 where an evil slave trader named George Masterson (Ramsey) has a curse put on him by his wife and some slaves in the attic of his house. The slaves give the wife a stone that will protect her and her son from the evil George. Jump 130 years and Dr. David Young (Stevens) moves into the same house with his girlfriend Kate (Keller) who at one time was a mental patient of his and her son (Segal). Kate starts having nightmares and hallucinations while David starts becoming abusive and acting like the former owner of the house. This is pretty standard low budget fair for the mid 1980's. There are a lot of nightmares (the Elm Street influence) but some of them are effective at getting a few good scares. Masterson is a good old fashioned monster and his visions and appearance is unsettling and scary. The movie splits in two with Kate and her boy having nightmares and David being possessed by Masterson's spirit. This gives the movie a very uneven feel and would have worked better as a whole if they had chosen one clear path. Still, Director Richard Friedman has some good moments like the ending dream state Kate and her son are in, is quite unpredictable and manages some suspense. Stevens is very wooden in the lead role which doesn't help. Scared Stiff is good as a decent time waster which will deliver a few scares and chills along the way.